The one benefit to Caleb and the crew’s impending doom: at least they had the light to see it by.

  The harsh white laboratory light seared their now-sensitive eyes.

  The Momma Octopus unfurled her miles of tentacle, each one supercharged with rows upon rows of clacking talons.

  She blinked slowly as she became accustomed to the air conditioned lab, the crimson and obsidian in her oblong eyes swirling like the YOU’RE DEAD screen.

  I hope that isn’t an omen, thought Caleb.

  Kayleigh was healed but still sore. She clutched her shoulder as she got back to her feet.

  “I don’t think I can move as well now.” Her eyes clouded with tears as she realised her fate. “And we all moved real shitty before.”

  “Remember, we’ve got to pick our openings, and commit to the dodge.”

  Dave nodded. “Caleb, you’ve got the timing down, don’t you?”

  “For the others,” He said, not wanting to reveal to Dave the name he’d given them. “That razor octopus moved so damn fast when it hit Kayleigh.”

  “Well, this one’s a lot bigger,” Dave said, uncertainty lacing his every word. He locked eyes with Caleb. “You’ve got this.”

  The momma octopus screeched, deafening the group. They doubled over, forced into identical animations where they clutched their ears and groaned.

  Oliver threw up.

  Caleb and Oliver ushered Oliver and Kayleigh a few steps up, then took position - Caleb in front, with Oliver looming behind like a cloak made of stone.

  The momma octopus screeched again, as if trying to warn them away. She oozed a slick of hissing black goo, exactly like the blood of the smaller octopuses.

  Maybe it isn’t blood at all. thought Caleb. Maybe it’s some kind of defense mechanism.

  Slopping forward on a trail of acid, the Momma Octopus reeled back with two tentacles, as if it was about to fling itself forward.

  I really hope it doesn’t.

  The Momma Octopus jerked forward, Caleb sidestepped and a hailstorm of acid rained down on Dave.

  They’d misjudged badly. Momma Octopus had stayed exactly where she was, instead choosing to use her goo as a projectile weapon.

  Dave caught the full force of the attack. He flailed on the ground, his clothing disappearing into his skin, his skin sloughing off his muscles, and his muscles dripping from his gleaming white skeleton. He didn’t even get time to scream before he collapsed into a still-melting pile of viscera.

  What now?

  Caleb dipped as fast as he could behind a nearby tank. The baby octopus inside seemed to laugh, its eyes ablaze with hatred. It knocked on the tank with its beak, goading its mother’s prey.

  Caleb searched for something, anything he could use to fight back

  This is a boss fight. He thought, trying to think of anything but Dave’s grisly end. They’ve dropped us into a boss fight with no weapons. They’ve given us the tools before, so the solution must be environmental.

  He looked up. Nothing but a white hangar ceiling.

  No pipes here, not that they would be any help. These monsters live in gas.

  Momma Octopus screeched again. He heard a splat, a crack and a hiss.

  It’s trying to target me without a line of sight. And if it hits those tanks… He gulped. More angry razor octopuses.

  Oliver’s cry echoed through the laboratory. “CALEB!”

  BANG BANG BANG

  “Don’t waste the bullets!” Caleb shouted back. “We don’t know how to kill it!”

  Caleb weaved leftwards through the tanks until he finally hit a wall. The steel case was mounted to the tall white wall. An instructional poster of word-like hieroglyphs, just like they’d seen lining the walls of the staircase was displayed next to it. They depicted a figure wielding a nozzle connected to a pipe which led to a bulky backpack. The sharp symbols around it suggested that it was the kind of tool you would only use in an emergency.

  The case had a numbered padlock denying entry.

  “Hmm…” he said in the deep hero’s voice. “Perhaps those dog tags would be useful here.”

  He humphed in his usual, reedier tone. “I could have figured that one out myself,” he said.

  All these hints… he thought. I hope we’re not on easy mode.

  A small brown box appeared in his line of vision.

  0129389382

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “Thanks…” he said sarcastically, lying to himself that he would have remembered Martinez’s code anyway.

  The bronze flamethrower gleamed in the light. He eased both the thrower itself and the tank from their housings and placed them on the floor. They were heavy as hell.

  He looked around for some fuel, but realised the thing must have already been loaded. After all, it was for emergencies.

  He put the tank on his back and grabbed the flamethrower, curling his index finger around the trigger. Then, remembering Oliver’s lesson on trigger discipline, he thought better of it.

  Don’t want to singe my dick off…

  He lumbered through the maze of tanks as quickly as he could, which was even slower than usual. His line of sight was relatively unimpeded thanks to the array of now-melting tanks.

  “Shit,” he muttered, raising the flamethrower up and preparing for a fight.

  The momma octopus still sat in the middle of the room, flanked by a platoon of minions. A small group of them feasted on Dave-goo.

  Kayleigh and Oliver were nowhere to be seen. Caleb hoped they had run back up the stairs. Being honest with himself, he didn’t like their chances.

  A small part of him was comforted by his name in capitals and bold on that save file. Still, he would have given anything to give that life-giving file to Dave now.

  Angry, hurt and tired, Caleb raised the flamethrower to the sky and pulled the trigger

  A tremendous blast of fiery death exploded from the business end of the flamethrower, bathing Caleb’s face in a hellish heat.

  The baby razorpi-

  Nice name.

  -turned to face him.

  Caleb felt the rage bubble up into his throat, escaping in a full-throated roar. He roared for Crisp White Shirt, for Martinez…

  For Dave.

  Aiming the flamethrower indiscriminately at the crowd of rabid razorpi, Caleb pulled the trigger. The razorpi scattered in panic as they realised death was upon them, scrambling up the shattered tanks and accidentally impaling themselves on their jagged edges. Some didn’t even get a chance to run, combusting instantly as the fire consumed them utterly.

  Caleb felt a booming laugh escape his throat now. He was possessed, a fragile and weak individual suddenly imbued with almost god-like power.

  The razorpi squeaked as they exploded. Caleb kept his distance, not wanting the shower of black acid to ruin his tank. He knew flamethrowers had a nasty habit of exploding if they malfunctioned.

  He doused the momma octopus in a liberal spray of flame. The pool of acid she’d surrounded herself ignited into a lake of fire. With nowhere to turn, she slashed in Caleb’s direction with her many knife-studded tentacles. He was untouchable.

  He inched forward as the threat waned, shooting intermittent blasts of flame until the tank ran dry of fuel. The whole white steel room glowed red, safe from the damage but too hot to touch. The Razorpi weren’t so fortunate. They burnt until their acid-blood ran dry. The smouldering embers stank of burnt fish sticks.

  Caleb heaved the flamethrower from his back. He ached all over.

  I wonder if we’ll ever beat this thing, he mused, somehow knowing that the worst was yet to come.

  He studied the meat-pile on the floor, now reduced to ash. Sticking out from the embers lay a bleached white human skull. It was all that was left of Dave.

  “I’m sorry,” Caleb croaked, unable to shake the feeling that this was all his fault. Despite the enormous threat of the momma octopus, Caleb had felt confident that it was going to take teamwork to beat her.

  Who the hell do you think you are? he thought. Now our protector is dead. Kayleigh’s going to hate me. I might as well go alone. The others don’t need me. They won’t want me.

  A tinny electrical whir grew and a small white robot on wheels came into view.

  “What the fuck are you?” Caleb threw a charred razorpi fragment at the bot. It seemed like it was built from whoever also built this laboratory.

  A neat thing really… he thought, examining its seamless frame and rubber spherical wheel system. The robot had a shallow dish set into its back, like a minimalist and very low-capacity haul truck.

  Two bendy arms with pincers attached emerged from the sides of its chassis. They sifted through the soot with the help of a blue laser array that scanned the path in front of it.

  The bot trilled when it discovered Dave’s skull, switching a green light on the front of its chassis. It had clearly found what it wanted…

  The pincers pulled the skull firmly onto its back. With the skull firmly in its possession, the bot quickly scanned Caleb. The green chassis light flickered red, then the thing peeled off through the labyrinth of testing tanks.

  That's it. I've reached breaking point. Past breaking point. The least this world can do is let me keep the only reminder of my biggest failure.

  The broken-hearted boy limped after the robot, but the chase was in vain. He soon lost the nimble bot, and the quiet whir of its wheels faded away to silence.

  Caleb chased the escaping bot until the rows of tanks finally resolved into a wide sliding door, like the entrance of a mechanic’s shop.

  And there it was, patiently waiting like a faithful dog, with Dave’s skull still firmly in its grasp.

  The sliding door smoothly pulled open to reveal a man, or at least Caleb thought it was a man, dressed entirely in white.

  The mystery man had pulled a surgical mask over his mouth and nose. an array of magnification lenses, microscopes and image filters mounted on a heavy-duty pair of glasses hid his eyes and a shock of short bleached blonde hair in a widow’s peak masked his true hair colour. He was the most synthetic person Caleb had ever seen in his life.

  The mad scientist picked up the bot.

  “A beautiful specimen,” he said, his rasping voice augmented by a digital amplifier.

  “Belker, as he tries to live and breathe.” Caleb said, in the hero’s voice.

  Belker whipped his head to regard Caleb. The array of lenses all dilated at once as they focused on Caleb.

  “You,” he hissed. “You shouldn’t be here yet.”

  Carefully placing the bot back onto the floor, Belker reached into a pocket at his waist. The bot zoomed down the septic hallway behind him to safety.

  Belker pointed the silenced handgun directly at Caleb’s face and shot three times.

  Caleb’s world exploded into red as his brains exited his skull. The world crashed into darkness.

  The darkness swirled, inky black. Then, dripping, that crimson text again…

  YOU ARE DEAD

  The words hung in the air, quivering with malevolence.

  After a few moments, two options presented themselves to Caleb’s disembodied consciousness:

  RETURN TO SAVE ROOM

  QUIT

  What would happen if he decided to quit now? Would he be returned to the real world or would life cease to exist? He considered making the gamble, but couldn’t bring himself to do it. Still, some part of him still had a morbid compulsion that seemed to grow the longer he hovered over that final word…

  No. You can’t leave them.

  The shimmering cursor leapt back to RETURN TO SAVE ROOM and he confirmed his choice.

  Caleb woke up alone slumped at the desk in the Save Room. He still tasted blood in his mouth. The typewriter in front of him was empty, no longer loaded with an ink ribbon.

  “Hello?”

  He was alone, which meant the whole world hadn’t reverted fully back to his last save state. He struggled to get his head around the mechanics of it all.

  “Right,” he said to himself, shaking off the brain fog. “Let’s try that again.”